Black & Decker CCC3000 Review

I recently moved from Barrow, Alaska to a new job in Cleveland, OH. Growing up in the cold barren land of Alaska I had always hoped to someday move to a town where I could catch some quality live sporting events but I guess the Cleve will have to suffice. Besides never getting able to see any postseason games in my new hometown there were other sacrifices I had to make, one of which was purchasing a weed whipper.

As you might expect in a town where we have over two months of straight darkness and a high temperature of around 40 degrees in the summer, I didn’t really have an opportunity to get out and get a tan tending to my tundra up in Barrow.

Even though I never had much experience with weed trimmers, I was familiar with the name Black & Decker so I decided to purchase the CCC3000 model from B&D.

There were a number of factors that went into me purchasing this particular weed trimmer, perhaps the best was that the string trimmer came in a 3-pack bundle with a hedge trimmer and a sweeper included. I have a lawn for the first time in 17 years and I’m going to be meticulous with it like a guy who paints 17th century toy soldiers under a magnifying glass on a Saturday night.

Price points

One of my first major concerns with the CCC3000 was the hefty $269.00 price tag. I wanted to save some money by going with a non-gas powered unit and I was thinking battery string trimmers cost maybe $80 or at the most $120. For almost $300 I could buy a heavy-duty gas trimmer or hire a gardener for that matter. After some research I came to the conclusion that I’d be constantly purchasing fuel and oil for the gas trimmer and the gardener would probably start sleeping with my wife so I decided the $269.00 wasn’t that expensive. After all the hedge trimmer and blower are included as are two extra batteries.

Battery battle

I did find that there were plenty of $80 cordless trimmers out there but I wasn’t familiar with the manufacturers. After some research of online reviews I also noticed that a majority of these inexpensive devices didn’t last even one cutting season and the batteries needed to be recharged after going through approximately four weeds.

I always thought a lithium battery was preferred but so far the nickel cadmium devices have held a pretty good charge. It should be noted I live on just under 2 acres of land and living in Alaska we didn’t have a huge need for yard decorations. This means my wife hasn’t littered our lawn with windmills, wishing wells, pink flamingos, gnomes, and rocks with our family crest on it…yet. The more crap like that you have in your lawn the more trimming that will need to be done which will obviously wear down your battery. So far I’ve been getting about 50 minutes of run time when I want to trim around downspouts or clean up the edge of my lawn.

Cutting power?

The head of the B&D CC3000 string trimmer is about 12” long so it cuts a pretty significant section of weeds but is still small enough for delicate “surgery” around lawn gnomes and windmills. Like I said I don’t have any real significant weed patches around my yard but for what I do have the unit cuts great. According to the specs that came with the trimmer the line diameter is .065” but I supposed if you had a thicker patch to cut through you could get a bigger diameter string.

How does she handle?

How does she handle – It’s something that my supposed gardener would ask about my wife but it’s also a question I had about the B&D CC3000 string trimmer. Besides battery life and cutting power I think the third most important feature of a good weed whipper is comfortability of use. The first thing I noticed was that the Black & Decker CC3000 was light, although I’ve never actually put it on a scale it only feels to weigh about 7 pounds. On top of that Black & Decker has really upgraded the ergonomics of this device from a telescopic shaft to adjust for height to an auxiliary handle that lets you switch up grip to avoid fatigue.

Final thoughts

I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the B&D CC3000 not just because I get to weed whip for the first time in almost two decades but because it’s a pretty solid unit. It fires up instantly, stays charged, and comes with a hedge trimmer and blower that I’ll admit I haven’t even used yet. Much like cell-phone batteries I’m sure the NiCad unit on my trimmer won’t hold charge as well in the future but that’s a by-product of getting use out of it. I like the fact that the unit is lightweight, has low vibration, has no emissions and I don’t have to hire a gardener that will break up my family.